Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Hello! I hope you all enjoyed our last signing for a wee bit and now have in your possession a signed Fat Freddy’s Cat Omnibus. Your Saturday afternoons are now your own again so perhaps you’d like to spend this one having a horizontal read of Joe Sacco’s latest opus. And why wouldn’t you? We’ve got an Exclusive Gosh! Bookplate Edition Footnotes in Gaza in the shop which I mentioned on the blog yesterday while you weren’t looking. I’d recommend nabbing one quick-smart, I very much doubt they’ll be around for long.Another one that snuck in through the back door is Seductive Espionage by the ridiculously talented young illustratorKevin Dart who you might remember from this post here. Our own Will Kane can be seen raving about it over at his World of Kane and the astute reader will even spot him doing the same on the back of the book. So what is it? In the words of Dart, "See, it's an art book about these spy movies, but the movies don't actually exist, and there's a trailer, but that's fake too... ah forget it." In short, it’s 72 pages of movie posters, behind-the-scenes stories, promotional artwork and production stills for a series of painfully stylish spy movies that never even happened. The trailer he’s on about is up at Kane’s blog and you’ll probably end up pissed off the film doesn’t exist. Thankfully, the book does.

Right next to Seductive Espionage on the arty shelf is the latest volume of Robert Valley’s Massivve Swerve (sic, tsk). Valley’s an animator/storyboard artist who’s worked on stuff like Gorillaz music videos, The Beatles’ “Rock Band” trailer and seems to spend a lot of time drawing ladies, many of whom can be found in this very volume. Over at Storyboard Art there’s a selection of pages from the book along with a round-up of animated bits and bobs. We’ve got both previous volumes in the shop so you can do a Valley round-up of your very own.

Stitches is a childhood memoir by the award-winning children’s author/illustrator David Small which I’ve not read yet but it sounds horrific. “One day David Small awoke from a supposedly harmless operation to discover that he had been transformed into a virtual mute. A vocal cord removed, his throat slashed and stitched together like a bloody boot, the fourteen-year-old boy had not been told that he had cancer and was expected to die.” It looks and reads like a silent movie, absurd and terrifying like Kafka and it’s all appallingly true. There’s an excerpt here and a huge in-depth review of it over here. Small (who can talk now) is interviewed here and there talking about the Alice’s white rabbit, Roman Polanski and fine-nib pens.

Alex Raymond’s (Flash Gordon) Rip Kirby was possibly the most successful and undoubtedly the longest-running private eye comic strip in history. He was “a cross between Philo Vance and Philip Marlowe” according to the Encylopedia of American Comics – in other words, an unflappable gent with a penchant for classical music and fine brandy, a brilliant wit and the ability kick arse if needed. He was a decorated war hero surrounded by a bevy of gun molls and beautiful women with names like Honey Dorian and Pagan Lee, all dressed in the ultra-chic fashions of the day...

This week you can get your mitts on the first volume of reprinted Kirby strips, all reproduced from pristine syndicate proofs so there’ll be no yellowed newspaper nonsense here. It’s done by the same Eisner award-winning folk who brought you the recent Terry & The Pirates book and you can expect four more to come.

In the same year that Marvel gave you Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s Daredevil: Born Again they also published Doug Murray and Michael Golden’s The ‘Nam, a series that has since been neglected collection-wise unlike Miller’s Daredevil. CbR wrote a piece on the history of The ‘Nam late last year which I’m directing you to on account of the fact that we’ll have the first ‘Nam trade paperback collecting issues #1-10 on our shelves this Thursday. It’s been out of print for at least a decade so be nice and welcome it back.

In comics this week you can discover the origin of the titular doctor from Joss Whedon’s Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog in the Dr Horrible One-Shot. Zach Whedon (brother of Joss and co-creator of Dr Horrible, writer of TV’s Fringe, Deadwood) pens the latest Dark Horse One Shot Wonder and talks about it at Newsarama. But don’t expect any singing. Preview!

Fred Van Lente (that man again) gives you anther history lesson in this week’s Comic Book Comics #4. He’s been retelling the history of comics in the style of his hit Action Philosophers! and it’s a series well worth your time. For bits of previous issues go to their Evil Twin Comics site but for the latest one you can head here. This instalment features Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby, Hergé and R. Crumb.

Speaking of Crumb, a rare exhibition of his original artwork is now on at London’s Scream Gallery on Bruton Street. Over 300 pieces have been selected from the Symbolic Collection (bits of which can be seen online) spanning from the 1960s to 2001. It’s on from now until the 12th of December.

Ian Edginton (Stormwatch PHD, Stickleback, Scarlet Traces) and Davide Fabbri (Star Wars) unite in a six-issue miniseries which sees Sherlock Holmes take on shambling zombies in foggy Victorian London. Edginton talks about Victorian Undeadwith CbR. It’s not a traditional Holmes story like his Hound of the Baskervilles with Ian Culbard (get your bookplated edition here at Gosh!) but he argues that it’s “traditionally Holmesian in the way he deals with the situation he's confronted with. It's just that the situation is like nothing he's ever encountered before. I've woven into the plot a number of real-world events that happened at the time and do have a direct bearing on the story. Some are to do with the wretched, squalid conditions that existed in London back then, and one in particular is to do with a strange celestial event that became a matter of public record.” If this series goes well there’ll be more in the post. Preview!

The final item on Norman Osborn’s evil To Do list is your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man. It’s also the last bit on your Dark Reign CheckList. So there you have it. Done and dusted.

You’ll probably remember Harker from our (fairly) recent swag of goodies from the Birmingham con. We’ve got all the issues mentioned previously back in stock plus the brand new #9. The Harker creators talk about it and the sales value of corpses at their blog.

There’s only ONE MORE WEEK left of the Comica Festival so if you’ve been planning on going – go now! Still to come are talks from Reinhard Kleist (whose Johnny Cash: I See a DarknessBookplate Edition is flying off the shelf), Ben Templesmith (30 Days of Night, Gentleman Corpse) and more, plus film screenings of new stuff by Philip Ridley (The Passion of Darkly Moon) and Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell). There’s loads more stuff at the site so go there.